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REVIEW PAINTING. DRAWING. PHOTOGRAPHY, MUSIC
HARRY SMITH ANTHOLOGY REMIXED CCA, Glasgow, until Sat 26 Jul 0...
Artist, filmmaker, musicologist: just a few of the labels attached to Harry Smith, the great American polymth of the 1950s. This exhibition celebrates the chain-smoking mavericks Anthology of American Folk Music. an 84-track collection from 1952.
This exhibition invited 84 contemporary artists and musicians to respond to tracks from the Anthology. thereby creating a plethora of ‘remixes’ via small paintings. collages. drawings and photographs. While they vary in quality. the combined effect of 84 tightly packed artworks. hung Salon-style over three walls. is visually arresting. Tracks from the Anthology quietly roll on in the background as we peruse the work. As it would take a long time to view every single work, viewers tend to select their personal favourites. as you might with an album of music. but certain works stand Out. for instance David Sherry's ironic twist on Ken Maynard's ‘Lone Star Trail'. a photograph of a modern day cowboy in jeans and T-shirt riding through the Irish ‘outback'.
A celebration is created throughout. not just of Harry Smith's important contributions. but of a fascinating and influential point in the hist0ry of Western music. (Rosie Lesso)
HEViEV’f PAINTING, PHOTOGRAPHY, INSTALLATION
AU FIL D’ECOSSE
lnstitut Francais, Edinburgh, until Fri 29 Aug 00.
‘Annie and Snowy’
REVIEV‘J PHOTOGRAPHY 8. FILM MARK NEVILLE: FANCY PICTURES Mount Stuart, Isle Of Bute, until Tue 30 Sep 0000
A man sits at his living room table, a pet pug and its pups at his feet. An elderly couple walk through the countryside, posing for the camera, stiff-backed and proud. The slides that follow, occasionally punctuated by Eastern European-sounding accordion and plaintive female singing, looks like pictorial records of some agricultural pogrom occupied by model workers basking in some rough-cast pan-generational Soviet idyll.
The sense of place that pervades Mark Neville’s photographs in ‘Tula Fancies’, however, is deceptive. These are not leftover remnants from some long forgotten five-year plan, but representations of 21 st century Bute in living, breathing colour. Neville modelled his studies on 19205 Soviet portraiture, name-checking the Russian Tula region as he commissioned the school captains of Rothesay Academy to compose the accompanying score.
The result is a 14-minute documentary photo essay of a community at work, rest and play, from still lifes of work benches and cattle in the living room, to Highland
Visual Art
show ceilidhs and after-hours reverie. The hinterland between wildlife and domestic pets becomes blurred, a counterpoint that becomes even more marked in the 18- minute film, ‘Fancy Pictures,’ a blurred slow-motion 16mm close-up, shot in the splendid grounds of Mount Stuart itself.
What initially looks like home movies pans out to resemble a more choreographed and impressionistic take on wildlife documentaries, whereby a pensive- looking sheep stands before a 19th century portrait of a regaIly poised spaniel. Such a backdrop is crucial as the camera concentrates on a group of frolicking cygnets protected by their own family even as they are at odds with their plush environment.
This is as far removed from David Attenborough as you can imagine, the film’s lack of soundtrack or voiceover lending a stark melancholy to a skewed depiction of domestic bliss. In the big house itself, the quartet of pictures that form ‘Photographs For The House’ suggest deeper connections still. It’s a feeling of another country, be it past, present or future, that’s conveyed best by the solitary school assembly piano with which the ‘Tula Fancies' slideshow ends. (Neil Cooper)
This collaboration between artist Cyril Barrand and poet John Hudson leaves no thread untied, no thematic ambiguity unresolved. With the result that our response to the work is tethered to the gallery space. Thankfully, however, in the realm of contempOrary art every conceptual cloud has a sensual silver lining. If all that is left for the viewer to do on encountering Au Fi/ d 'Ecosse is revel in the viewing. and not ponder answers to creatively posed questions. it is significant that the experience remains extraordinarin pleasing.
Barrand has created a series of exquisite canvases. each comprising a painted scene over-Iayed with tapestry and text. Like illuminated manuscripts. Barrand's gilded works become decorative objects, all connected by the pencilled trails of Hudson's poetic anecdotes. memories and myths. The words provide answers to the images. and. poring over the tailored surfaces and scrawling text. connections click satisfactorily into place. This recognition of subtly repeated tropes brings out a certain smugness in the viewer; you are made to feel you ‘get' it. Further to this. by indulging in the decorative, personal and tartan. both artists tug at a specifically Scottish set of heartstrings.
While irony can be sensed in Barrand's work. it is dampened by Hudson's poetics. There is however, a lot to be said for guilty pleasures and this exhibition yields instant gratification. (Rosalie Doubal)
1',‘ 1;? .Jul 2008 THE LIST 87